Section Problem in Word 98

[Saul Epstein]

Section Problem in Word 98

I often create Word 98 documents with a large number of sections (perhaps
50). They are all intended to be "Continuous".

At some point, for an unknown reason, one or two of the sections become
"Next Page", and I cannot make them "Continuous" again. The section box in
Format->Document-> Layout has only the choices of "New Page", "Odd Page",
and "Even Page" when this happens. "Continuous" is no longer a choice.

If I delete the section by highlighting and delete, the section is deleted
OK, but the next section mark above then becomes "Next Page", and I have the
same problem.

The only thing I have been able to do is to delete all section marks, and
start over. Is there some way of changing "New Page" to "Continuous" other
than through the "Layout" box, or some way to get the "Layout" box to have a
"Continuous" choice? Note that when the "Continuous" sections are first
created, all choices appear in the "Layout" box.

Saul Epstein

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Saul,

I think you just need to check "Apply to: Whole document" instead of "Apply
to: Current section", if you want all section breaks to be continuous.

Not sure when "Continuous" would not be a choice any longer. Perhaps the
page layout is different in the different sections, and a continuous
section break wouldn't do in that case? I have never gotten my head
completely around the way section breaks work, and often delete and
reinsert section breaks, same as you. Perhaps I should read
http://www.word.mvps.org/faqs/formatting/WorkWithSections.htm some day...
;-)

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Saul Epstein]

Thanks, Klaus,

Unfortunately, "Apply to whole document" doesn't fix the problem. Perhaps
it would prevent the problem in the first place, but once the problem
occurs, it doesn't work. I will e-mail you directly a simple sample of what
I get so perhaps you might see something I don't.

Thanks also for the link to the FAQs. I don't see an answer to this
particular problem, but it is an obviously valuable resource that I was not
aware of.

Thanks again,

Saul

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Saul,

Thanks, got your doc!

There's definitely something weird about it. In Word2002, I get an error
message as soon as I open the page layout dialog ("The value must be
between
0 pt and 1584 pt"). All sections say they are "Letter" format, but some are
611 × 791 pt, and others are 612 × 792 pt.

If I select everything and then set the page format to "Letter", the
weirdness seems to vanish. I can then set the section breaks to
"continuous".

No idea how the different "Letter" page sizes came about.

Regards,
Klaus


----- Original Message -----
From: "Saul Epstein" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2004 1:18 AM
Subject: FW: Section Problem in Word 98

 

[Klaus Linke]

Setting the format of all pages back to "Letter" didn't really get rid of
all the weirdness.

I tried to save in HTML and RTF format, to check if there's something
unusual about the section settings that I didn't see in the dialog or using
VBA.
But that *did* get rid of the weirdness.

So I'd call it some form of "corruption" ... though that really doesn't
explain anything :-(

Greetings,
Klaus

 

[Klaus Linke]

I finally figured it out: Line numbering was checked, and the distance of
the line numbers to the text was set to -1638,35 pt.
The line numbers weren't visible -- probably they were some 50 cm to the
left of my monitor ;-).

This invalid measurement seemingly caused the problems.

I wasn't able to remove the line numbers or the faulty "distance from text"
using the dialog, but a macro did it:

Dim sect As Section
For Each sect In ActiveDocument.Sections
sect.PageSetup.LineNumbering.DistanceFromText = 5
Next sect

Klaus

 

[Saul Epstein]

Klaus:

My Word documents seem to have plenty of weirdness all right! I don't think
the number problem is the same problem. I often find my line numbers being
at -22.75", but I am able to move them back to where they belong using the
numbers dialog box, and it isn't a big problem. I have no idea of why they
sometimes get misplaced. However, placing the line numbers properly doesn't
fix the section problem for me.

Your initial suggestion seems to work. I.e., going to: Page Setup -> Page
Attributes -> Microsoft Word -> Apply Size & Orientation to: -> Whole
Document. It is a lot of steps - but it works! I'm not quite sure yet, but
I think that I have to do it separately on each section that is messed up -
but that is OK, it usually is only one or two (out of maybe 50).

Thanks again.

Saul